Rackspace was specifically recognized as the only hosting provider in the SharePoint ecosystem. In the hosting section of report, Influencer50 wrote: “This category is, of course, a misnomer. There are no hosting firms which are particularly interested in SharePoint, with the notable exception of Rackspace. This, in turn, is entirely related to Rackspace’s acquisition of SharePoint911 in early 2012. The SharePoint911 team includes six SharePoint MVPs and its consultants have authored a dozen books on the subject. IT is one of the industry’s leading SharePoint consultant firms, and contributes four influencers to our Top50.”

Influencer50 determines the list by scoring each “player” based on market reach, frequency of impact, independence of impact, expertise, persuasiveness and thoroughness of role. From there, a field of hundreds of players whittled to 50 based on their scores.

Influencer50’s SharePoint Influencers list comes on the heels of another report from harmon.ie, which ranked two Rackers in the top 10 of the top 25 most influential online SharePoint influencers[2]. On that list, Rogers ranked No. 4 and Klindt at No. 6. According to harmon.ie, the top 25 influencers were identified using a formula that determines retweet frequency, blog reach, citations by other influential bloggers and related factors to measure the impact of individual SharePoint community members.